Temporary Alternative Realities

NYC Downlow Meatpackers

Glastonbury Festival, UK | 2016 - Current

Block9’s NYC Downlow has become a nightlife institution of legendary status at Glastonbury, the world’s largest green field music festival. This multi-roomed temporary club space, housed inside a life size film set replica of a seedy New York meatpacking warehouse circa 1982, is home to the world’s best underground DJ’s, queer performers… and an army of hot gay butchers.

Originally conceived and created by Block9 for Glastonbury 2007, the latest chapter in the NYC Downlow story combines historical and fictional narratives with installation art and exceptional music.

“After ten years on New York’s East 7th Street, rampant gentrification has resulted in eviction of the infamous gay nightclub NYC Downlow, forcing it to relocate across town to the Meatpacking District. The club now shares premises with the notorious West Side Bath House in a fully functioning Meatpacker’s warehouse; two worlds colliding under one roof… “

Resident Advisor NYC Downlow is “categorically one of the best clubs in the world.”

Mixmag “NYC Downlow is the best gay club in the world”

Vice NYC Downlow “One of the Best Queer Clubs in the UK”

Donations collected at the door of The NYC Downlow support good causes in the UK and Internationally.

IICON

Glastonbury Festival, UK | 2019 – Current

IICON is an immense sculptural artwork, architectural intervention and immersive music project, posing questions about power, technology and humanity in the digital age. It premiered at Glastonbury 2019 and will be touring the world from 2020.

Taking the form of a colossal, anonymised head - epic in scale, sinister in nature - IICON is a pseudo-religious monument to the terrifying new realities emerging in our digital, data-driven, post-truth age. It showcases a vision of future music from the cutting edge of today's underground, from Glitch-Funk Algorave and Post-Dubstep IDM, to Footwork, Grime, Electro and Cyber-Dub.

“IICON represents the data-fueled power of faceless multinationals and personifies how humanity has found itself trapped in self-imposed, digital bondage. It is our response to the world we live in today.”

Dua Lipa

International Arena Tour | 2018

Dua approached Block9 to create her forthcoming show and bring new creative direction to the tour. Our brief was to evolve the stage show beyond a chart topping pop aesthetic to an edgier and slicker “Block9” aesthetic. We created principal production concepts for the international arena tour. Producing and directing video content and overall creative direction, Block9 worked in partnership with the choreography, lighting design and costume departments to deliver a world class stage show.

Birmingham Opera Company: Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk

The disused Tower Ballroom, a former nightclub and wedding venue on the outskirts of Edgbaston, became the perfect setting for this powerful, immersive production of Shostakovich’s Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk by award-winning opera director Graham Vick with The City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra.

As designers, Block9 worked across all visual aspects of the show from staging and set through to costume and graphic design.

Underdrome

Roundhouse Theatre, London, UK | 2009

As production designers for Darren Johnston’s site specific, Butoh-inspired contemporary dance piece, Block9 created a "frozen moment in time". The performance was staged in the round on a large, central, x-shaped platform with an ethereal, 6m tall, bonsai tree at its centre. Around the tree's canopy, as if startled by an unheard gunshot, are 2000 paper birds.

Production Design // Scenography

Dismaland

Tropicana, Weston-super-Mare, UK | August - September 2015

Block9 created the Dismaland Castle in response to Banksy’s brief:

“Disney, the childhood dream you sold to us has turned to shit.”

The massive installation, built over a disused swimming pool, was the centerpiece for Banksy's Dismaland, an epic dystopian art show located in an abandoned theme park in Weston-super-Mare, just south of Banksy’s hometown of Bristol.

Collaboration

Demon Dayz Margate

Dreamland, Margate, UK | 2017

In addition to our role as Production Designers for Gorillaz, Block9 are also lead artists with Jamie Hewlett and Damon Albarn in the creation of Demon Dayz Festival, from concept development and graphic design through to set design for the festival’s stages.

"Demon Dayz is a portal into a new and distinctly different reality that appears briefly and is then gone. It is a crazy, dangerous, exciting, anything goes party at the end of time, where up is down, black is white, good is bad. When you are released from the shackles of daily life and your compass spins. Demon Dayz has a cult following. It exists outside of normal time. Forget about Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. You don’t have to ‘like’ anything and the anxieties of your 9 to 5 melt away as you enter the gates. Demon Dayz is Carnival. You are human and you are alive.…"

London Underground

Glastonbury Festival, UK | 2010 - Present

A sinister, 50ft, decaying tower block with a life-size, blazing tube train bursting from the 5th floor, the mighty London Underground showcases the cream of London's pirate radio/sound system culture, and since its debut at Glastonbury in 2010 this temporary artwork/nightclub has amassed a cult following. The interior of the club features eye-popping lighting, lasers and visuals and Block9 worked with 'Shunt' director David Rosenberg and The Roundhouse Theatre to create a series of unexpected theatrical installations and interventions hidden within the tower block.

Gorillaz - The Now Now

International Festival & Arena Tour | 2018

Block9 were production designers for Gorillaz’ 2018 live tour. Working alongside Jamie Hewlett and Damon Albarn to deliver new creative content, Block9 established a strong visual identity for the show which journeys through back-catalogue classics, across the pixilated landscape of ‘Humanz’ and into the unchartered territories of brand new album, ‘The Now Now’.

"The Now Now is presented as a series of poignant, dreamy moments peppered throughout the show. Each one is an ethereal postcard, a snapshot of a very specific time and place. The result is a rich, psychedelic, swirling, tripped-out world of light and colour."

Gorillaz - Humanz

Block9, working with Jamie Hewlett and Damon Albarn, were production designers for the Gorillaz’ 2017-18 live tour and art directors of creative content for the ‘Humanz' live show.

"The bio-digital world view of Humanz is brought to life through a glitched and warped reality - the 2D/digital world of Jamie’s animated band fusing with our own existence. 2D, Noodle, Russel and Murdock have taken on almost human form and seem to float in the blackness that envelopes the stage. Classic Gorillaz artwork combines with brand new illustrations and animation wrapping Damon, the band and the featured artists in a pixelating, sparking, funking world of beautifully executed, bio-digital chaos."

Demon Dayz LA

Pico Rivera, Los Angeles, CA, USA | 2018

Block9 are lead artists in partnership with Jamie Hewlett and Damon Albarn in the creation of Demon Dayz Festival. Having brought sell-out, ‘bio-digital chaos’ to a quiet English coastal town, Gorillaz’ Demon Dayz returned in 2018, this time to California USA.

“Demon Dayz is a celebration of all things weird and wonderful - counter-cultural icons, scared geometry, comic books, underground hip-hop, misfits, punks and skate rats. Extraordinary live music plus hidden art works and twisted character parades. Leave the anxieties of your 9-5 at the gates, take a deep breath and step into the unknown.”

NYC Downlow

Glastonbury & Lovebox Festivals, UK | 2007 - 2015

The original NYC Downlow was created by Block9 for Glastonbury 2007. In this film-set replica of a ruined NYC tenement, the murky homo fantasies of The Downlow crew fused to resurrect New York's golden age. The exposed first floor apartment is an outdoor music and performance stage, playing host to the UK's finest alternative cabaret stars. Having purchased a false moustache from the 'Porn Kiosk' (with proceeds going to charity) you make your way down a seedy back alley into a temporary but authentic vintage New York gay club.

This unique installation achieved instant success and in 2016, after 10 years of block-busting notoriety, the venue was reimagined and rebuilt as an equally spectacular, even bigger, full-scale 1980’s Meatpacker’s Warehouse complete with swinging sides of beef and go-go boy butchers. Moustaches are still mandatory.

Walled Off - Palestine

West Bank, Palestine | 2017

Block9 designed two of the nine bedrooms at Banksy’s art-hotel-cum-political-intervention. In February 2017 we took a covert team to Bethlehem to oversee the installation, and to work across the delivery of the rest of the Hotel prior to opening.

Room 5 is a six-person dormitory featuring tented room dividers reminiscent of Balfour-era British army camps. Room 3 is designed around Banksy’s ‘Pillow Fight’ mural and boasts a panoramic view of concrete and graffiti.

Utopia

Block9 worked with award-winning filmmaker, writer and artist Penny Woolcock to create this site-specific installation in the cavernous main space of London’s Roundhouse.

Starting from audio recordings and transcripts of interviews, Block9 collaborated with Penny throughout the creative process and conceived, designed and fabricated the installation - a series of interconnected walkthrough spaces and artworks.

Concept // Art Direction // Collaboration // Education & Mentorship

Creative Retreat Palestine

West Bank, Palestine | 2018

Conceived after an extended period of covert operations helping Banksy produce the Walled Off Hotel art project in Bethlehem, Block9 returned to the West Bank in February 2018 for a "Creative Retreat at The Walled Off Hotel" which saw us host a musical creative retreat… with a difference.

A twist on traditional, peaceful retreats for writers, musicians and painters in the Swiss Alps or the South of France, the retreat aimed to stimulate creativity and cultural connections, taking inspiration from the geo-political landscape of Palestine. The clichéd chalet with open fire and mountain views was swapped for "the hotel with the worst view in the world”, which sits in the shadow of the 25ft high concrete Israeli separation barrier.

A group of select recording artists from across the globe were invited to take part including world renowned musician and producer Brian Eno, Beirut's much heralded Mashrou Leila, underground US DJ/Producer The Black Madonna, avant-garde singer/songwriter/producer Roisin Murphy, and Palestinian heavyweight Samir Joubran of Trio Joubran.

Lana Del Rey - Ultraviolence

US Tour, USA | 2015

Taking Fritz Lang’s 1927 film ‘Metropolis’ as inspiration, Block9 created a stage set comprising a ‘graphic-novel-noir’ cityscape lit by vintage theatre lights. Designed to integrate seamlessly with show lighting and video, the cityscape also houses a state-of-the-art LED matrix. Everything was designed and built in London and shipped to the US.

Creative Consultancy // Art Direction // Scenography // Collaboration

Warehouse Party

Block9 HQ, London, UK | 2017

Block9 hosted an event to celebrate moving headquarters to an exciting new arts hub, The Silver Building, in Silvertown, East London.

We also worked with MA Students from the Information Experience Design course at The Royal College of Art who were invited to join us in creating an exhibition of their work on Surrealism.

Genosys

An audiovisual hybrid that blurs the boundaries between art and music, the Genosys outdoor music arena celebrates the pre-digital dance floor in spectacular style.

"Hovering in the shadows of an ancient industrial power facility, a towering concrete and glass structure lies dormant and overgrown. This is Genosys. Short for Generated Oxygen System, this epic, brutalist ‘tree’ was built to save the once poisoned planet. It nurtured and preserved plant life within its huge tanks and, as it drank in the excess atmospheric carbon, it poured out fresh oxygen. Lost and forgotten, Genosys has lain silent until now…"

Originally a Thames Arts commission, the 50ft, 55 Tonne structure was conceived, designed and built by Block9 for ‘The Tree of Light’, a series of large-scale outdoor performances and part of the London 2012 Cultural Olympiad.

Lana Del Rey - Born To Die

European Tour | 2013

Block9 worked with award-winning US singer Lana Del Rey to design the stage set for her first European tour. Taking inspiration from the Paradise Edition of her album “Born To Die”, Block9 created a world steeped in faded Hollywood glamour, with a subtle contemporary edge. A backdrop of golden, art deco windows act to frame to the specially commissioned re-edits of videos from the album, and a crumbling grand piano houses two midi-keyboards. Bespoke period chandelier and lighting fixtures are fitted with programmable LED’s allowing them to be integrated into the show and a pair of hand-sculpted lions sit as guardians at the edge of the stage. Completing the scene are six real, taxidermy crows that have raided Lana’s dressing table – the stolen jewels in their beaks catching the light.

Production Design // Scenography // Art Direction // Collaboration

L'Officiel

Zurich, Switzerland | 2014

Block9 transformed a Zurich theatre into an immersive "Coco's Apartment" experience for the Swiss launch of fashion publication L'Officiel. Working from photographs and historical accounts of Coco Chanel's Parisian home, Block9's installation features original furniture, ceramics and taxidermy from the era alongside 700 antique books and museum-piece costumes. Performance on the night was co-curated and provided by Block9.

Skrillex

Mothership World Tour | 2014

U.S. DJ and producer, and winner of six Grammy Awards, Skrillex asked Block9 to join the core creative team working on the concept, design and production of the stage set for his 2014 Mothership tour. The giant animatronic spaceship was designed by Production Club in LA, fabricated by TAIT in Pennsylvania, and finished by Block9. It debuted at Coachella festival in California. Block9 worked with Burst-tv on design variations which can be seen here alongside the final spaceship.